Journal Entry Dates: 2007: 7/14, 7/17, 8/3, 8/10
The Jazz Messenger Journal Entry
8-10-07 – Opening Night
Earlier in the day in my office we did a run-thru with most of the cast attending. Ellen (Avril) had a delay in her flight from Texas the night before and landed at 3:00am. Olmo (Mathieu) was working. There were one or two scenes which had to be altered, due to the fact that on Tuesday we discovered that the French doors didn’t fit on our new smaller stage and one of the props had to remain on stage because it could not be brought on quickly enough. After some discussion we revised the placement of the sheet music and altered a few lines to reference them. It affected Olmo’s blocking and lines, so we called him to get his very late approval. He was fine with it. Oh, then we called Michael, the director, oops!
Journal entry 8/03/07: The Daily News will run the story this coming Thursday, barring any financial or military catastrophe between now and then.
Well my prediction came true on both fronts: Hedge Funds are plummeting and firms are closing. The Dow Jones dropped some 300 points; and flooding in the NYC subway system and tornadoes in Bay Ridge on Wednesday knocked my article from the pages of the Daily News on Thursday.
We arrived at the theater at 6:00pm. It was a cold night in August: 55 degrees. The theater had experienced some flooding and the carpeting was not completely dry. Ironically, where we set the cellar on stage, there was a puddle. Art imitates life. Go figure! We went into the dressing room and got into our costumes and makeup. We then waited until the show before us ended and the audience left the building. We were given the all clear at 6:45pm. Ok, go! We had 15 minutes to set the stage and props, roll the piano into position and set up the Combo. It went smoothly enough, except for the two gaping holes in the floor of a narrow area lit with a blue light where the actors had to pass over to make their entrances. Michael, our Venue Director, had to think quickly. The audience was about to enter. He and I placed a folded rubber mat over the holes and then a carpet over that. It worked well enough. Places were called and the audience was let in.
We had a good sized audience for the first night about 40 people plus some industry folk. The show ran fairly smoothly, barring the occasional missed cues. Up until that point we had only been on the actual stage running the show for a total of two hours within the entire month’s rehearsal process. We opened the show not having altered the blocking to two of the last scenes of the play.
I kept thinking how long it had taken since the idea came to me in London in 1999, while watching a documentary on four French women “collaborators” telling their story about how they fell in love with German officers and soldiers in Occupied France, only to have their heads shaved and paraded through town after it was liberated. WWII had always been told in black and white: the heroes and the villains stayed heroes and villains through to the end of the war. This was grey, different, and their circumstances were more compelling than any WWII drama I had seen. Also in London around the same time, I read in the Sunday Times magazine section (I think Saddam Hussein was on the cover) in an article about music, a mention about a white South African who owned an entire slave orchestra.
When I returned to New York that September, I started to write the synopsis to combine these two opposing yet parallel thoughts. As I started researching jazz music during the war, other than the USO tours and the canteen shows, it became clear that all the chapters and sections ended in 1939 and picked up again in 1945. All the great Black musicians written about at the time left their tours in England, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Russia, etc., and returned to contracts in the States. At times I would come across an article or chapter where a jazz musician was mentioned as living in one of these countries at the time, and then several months or even a year later see their name in another article, which was not about jazz but referred to them as being Black (or Negro). I was constantly putting two and two together to make five. It wasn’t until I went to France to visit the Resistance Museums and exhibits that I saw Black and White Resistance fighters in the same photos, training and marching through the countryside. Where the hell did these guys come from? I had to find out. As far as I knew, there were no Black people living in France during the war. The research and writing took about seven years because I was so caught up in discovering all this for myself.
At one point, when I found the town my play was located in, it was because the entire town I wanted to research for being destroyed by the Germans and left as a museum, Oradour-sur-Glane, was closed until April. I wound up in Saint-Priest-Taurion at a bar having a beer. Suddenly, a man rushes in and, obviously in French, asks if anyone speaks English. My French wasn’t so good. I thought he wanted to use my cell phone which didn’t work in France (but don’t get me started on that!). Two minutes later I’m being rushed out the door—the bartender promising to keep my beer on ice (reassuring words when you are about to run off with a stranger)—and driven away to speak on the phone to someone in England.
I arrive at the man’s house. His wife, a German woman, is sitting in the salon. I remove my shoes like he does and we enter his small office. He presses redial and hands me the phone. Allo?...Oui!...Oiu!...Oui! Madame, j’ai une probleme… The man grabs the phone from me. The woman on the other end is speaking French. I thought the reason I was there was to interpret English. He starts yelling at the woman, turns back to me and says, “C’est ma bell-mere!” Apparently, his wife overrode the previous redial number to England when she called her mother after her husband ran to the bar to find someone exactly like me: a Black man from America who speaks French and lived in England.
Madame Parlour … I’m sure they spent the time to teach him German before they could ever begin to understand an African with an English accent speaking French to Germans. It’s incroyable!
The husband then goes to the window and starts screaming again. His mother-in-law lives across the rear yard. He redials and then hands the phone back to me. Luckily, the English woman on the other end speaks English. I gave her the order number. The man bought a Cannon Copier on-line and sent a check in the mail to England. He wanted to know if they received the check and when the copier was coming. I sorted the whole international affair out. I explained to the man in French that the check had arrived and the copier was being shipped on Wednesday. He thanked me, his wife nodded with a smile and he brought me back to the bar to buy me a meal. I walked in and apparently, this guy as usual was the talk of the bar. More people had arrived since I left with the man. They all knew who I was and why I had left. Everyone came over and shook my hand as if to say, “believe me, we’ve all been through some crisis with this guy before.” The man paid for my meal and rushed out the door. I felt so at home. This will be the town the play is to be set in. It even had a train station and a bridge to blow up (that was cut from the play two years ago).
Le Pére I have heard of you. There was talk of you in town, quite disagreeable.
Terry Disagreeable?
Le Pére Yes, if you must know. Are you English or North African?
Terry American, but I left about five years ago…to join a jazz band touring England, Germany and finally France.
Seven years later I am on stage at The Village Theater with a cast of seven, a jazz combo of four and a crew of five, retelling the story from all that research. It’s a fantastic feeling even if the last month was one of the most exhausting times in my life with juggling clients and construction sites during the day and rehearsing and producing at night. Most of my clients and colleagues have no clue what I do with my evenings and weekends.
The Jazz Messenger Journal Entry
8-03-07 – Countdown to D-Day
Well, I’ve been working overtime in my office to make up for the time spent on the production. As a professor at FIT and licensed architect who runs his own business, I am very familiar with multi-tasking. However, when it rains it pours:
7/16/07 Battle plans had been drawn: Today we were told there was a problem with our venue, The Jane Street Theater, and that we were not to issue any promotional material with the theater, date and times indicated on it. I received this correspondence from HQ just 30 minutes after I paid for the Village Voice ad and two days after I had sent out my fundraiser invitations. And my air conditioning went out in my apartment.
I attended a communications training session at 1300 hours, well actually a portal training session for accessing the FIT webmail system. Access denied, password expired!
7/20/07 The cost of fighting a war: I met Conor, my accountant, who hands me my quarterly tax statement-an ugly sight.
My adjutant is AWOL!
7/21/07 No time for Sergeant: My assistant called to say she was quitting and going into retail. I have a client presentation on Monday, after which I meet with the Dean of Human Resources at FIT. The fundraiser is on Tuesday evening. The work is piling up.
7/24/07 The first line of attack: My fundraiser at Fat Cat at 75 Christopher Street took place with the Jazz Combo entertaining the troops. I announced that we still don’t have a theater and that we will have to send out a revised venue, date and time as soon as we get word from HQ.
7/29/07 Goooooooal!!! My soccer team, Arsenal, wins the Emirates Cup. Sorry, but I’m an Arsenal fan, and things haven’t been going so well for them either. Besides, several of the names in The Jazz Messenger come from the French players on the Arsenal team. Also, there is no cold water running in my apartment. Temperature’s rising!
7/30/07 The War Room: I meet with the Vice President at 1030 hours to review my plans for the fall semester at FIT. She informs me that she used to work in the same company as my father many years ago. We made plans to meet again.
At 1430 hours my electrician fails inspection from the Electrical Department at the DOB.
At 1700 hours we have a full-run of the play. It’s running rather long at the moment!
8/03/07 Meet the Press: I had a meeting with Errol T. Louis, my war correspondent, today where I made a statement about the plans for The Jazz Messenger. A photographer took photos of me playing my bugle on 33rd Street and 10th Avenue. The Daily News will run the story this coming Thursday, barring any financial or military catastrophe between now and then.
Köhn Yes, of course I was at the restaurant. The Resistance, they must be taken care of immediately. I must stop these bombings and this sabotage of my work. (He reads from reports to General Brehmer.) Today a driver was shot and smashed his truck into an electrical pole killing the electrical engineer who came crashing to the ground on his head. He was in the middle of fixing the wires that had been cut by the Resistance the day before....
The Jazz Messenger Journal Entry
7-17-07 – AEA Article VI, Section 2(c)
I received a letter from Actors’ Equity Association that scared me to death, especially in light of the subject matter of The Jazz Messenger.
Dear Mr. Daniels:
This letter is to formally notify you that you that as of July 11, 2007, you have been placed on Conflict of Interest status as a result of becoming a producer as per the attached copy of Article VI of the Actors’ Equity Association Constitution and By- Laws…prohibits participation…a condemnation…free speech…democratic community…asterisks on it as identification for this status…Conflict of Interest list.
Imagine my outrage when I read in the letter that as a producer my rights as an actor have been “temporarily” stripped and that I must wear the dreaded * visible on the outer lapel of my producer’s suit at all times. I’m not to attend union meetings. And I’m on a list too! Did this mean that I had to close the show, because I was producing and acting? Did I have to hide my identity as an actor when out in public? What about the money I put up? Where do I hide the residuals I’ve made as an extra until the show is over?
Well, I called immediately to find out. I was told that actors always freak out when they receive this letter. I don’t blame them. However, much to my surprise, the status is there to protect actors from their employers when attending union meetings, for fear of being fired for speaking their mind. The duration of this status is for one year. So, I promise not to go to any union meetings for a period one year after my producer status has ended.
I’m glad that’s all sorted. Now back to my lines.
Act I, scene VI
Terry: How did you get here M. le Père?
Le Père: I’m being transferred to a prison. But I believe the Gestapo doesn’t want me influencing the other prisoners with spiritual resistance and guidance.
The Jazz Messenger Journal Entry
7-14-07 - Bastille Day
I was getting my lines under my belt at about 1:30pm and was getting hungry. So I stopped at the end of the scene.
Scene 5
Terry: Haven’t you ever just wanted to let loose, let the music take over every muscle in your body? Man just let Go!
Köhn: I wouldn’t play that music anywhere near a German officer’s funeral. So don’t pound any beats on the floor unless you wish to be pounded as well.
I left to get my usual two slices with pepperoni and a Seagram’s ginger ale in a plastic bottle up the street at Pizza Park. On my way back, I saw the light was green and I started to walk across the street. Three steps off the curb the silver hood of a car came into my vision. The car was making a left turn onto 1st Avenue and hit me in the crosswalk. It screeched to a halt hitting my hand and the ginger ale in my right hand, which smashed into my leg. I then saw the guy who hit me. “Sorry man, I didn’t see you. Are you alright?” He was a young guy with a baseball cap on in a 4-door silver sedan. I was dazed for a few seconds as I spun around in place. I didn’t answer at first. Then I did this kind of split second internal body assessment and then said, “Yes.” He then asked again, “Are you alright?” Again, I said, “Yes.” There was no damage to me or my right hand. He told me to go ahead and cross in front of him. I looked at his car to see if there was a dent. There was none. I told him to go. He said, “No you go first.” I said no. He asked if I was alright one more time. I said yes, but I had turned to go back up onto the curb by this time. No one around me said anything, not a word. No one except the driver asked if I was ok. He drove away slowly, as if he wasn’t sure he should leave. I stayed on the curb until the light changed once then twice then a third time. I still had the ginger ale in my hand. It acted like an airbag against my leg, but didn’t explode. The pizza box was still in my left hand: didn’t want to drop that. I crossed the street and went home. I ate my pizza in silence, while watching the last 20 minutes of a Celtics vs. AC Milan soccer match being rerun on TV. After I ate, I jumped up and down and shook myself off. I started on my lines again.
Scene 6
Le Père: Are you alright?
Terry: Oh, I’m just fine, thanks. Who are you?
